4 Notes on Scar Tissue
by inelegantprose
Summary: "It wasn't really a lie, though – it's just that it was coming not from desire but from the place inside her that protected all her most vulnerable bits. Plaque, lacquer, lamination. A queer sort of scar tissue meant to keep her safe. Keeping her safe, she was keeping herself safe." Leia tries to protect herself once she and Han start sleeping together.


_Prompted by "#35 - Go on, tell me. Tell me you don't love me." Sexual content, references to sexual violence, crosspost from Tumblr. This piece is very grim – consider yourself warned – and does not necessarily overlap with anything else of mine. I was interested, though, in how some work that puts their first time en route to Bespin imagines their dynamic as going from intense build-up to their first time, to their first time, and then to the rest of the trip being all sex, all perfect, all the time. Crosspost from Tumblr._

4 Notes on Scar Tissue

1\. Night doesn't happen here. Not like normal, not on its own – they have to make their own night, with the timing of lights and sleep and meals. With brushing teeth and bathing and fresh outfits – fresh combinations of his clothes, for her. Different ways of wearing her hair. All these ways to mark time passing, one moment into another, how she'd marked nineteen into twenty-one, no improvised party a match for rote routine.

Now they don't bother to make nighttimes that are separate from days, spend whole spans of time in bed, keep lights low always. Now she wakes when he wakes, eats when she's hungry, showers when he's through with her. When they're through with each other. Sometimes she feels uneasy about all the chores she filled the hours with before the trip became one long – session, in bed together. If she'd fused things only as foreplay, to make her back ache so he'd have reason to rub it. What became of all those repairs, why were they complete once she acquiesced, why did it suddenly seem there was nothing to do but lie together?

But there were only so many repairs they could do, before they reached Bespin. So this was paranoia, surely. And it wasn't that he made her feel paranoid, it was only that – it was only that she had been worried, a bit, that once she'd give him something she couldn't take it back. Or rather – that she'd have to give it again, and again, and again? And maybe it was beginning to feel that way, sort of? Not because of him – not because of him. Because of her. The thing inside her that made her feel that way. The voice that said things like _I want to know what it feels from behind, I want to know what it feels like against a wall_ and drove him wild. Spilling out of herself in a breathy soprano that maybe was just her bedroom voice, not so much the voice of a lie. Not a lie. She did want to know. From a different place, though. The place inside her that wanted to set up "a wall" or something, whatever it was people always told her _to her face_ that she was creating between them, that protected all her most vulnerable bits. Plaque, lacquer, lamination. A queer sort of scar tissue meant to keep her safe. Keeping her safe, she was keeping herself safe.

2\. She'd cried the first time, after he drew it out of her. Not a bad cry – a good cry, an emotional cry, an accidental kind of cry. She'd said _I can't I can't_ and he'd said _let it go, I promise it'll be good, just let it go_ and she had and she'd cried and it was so embarrassing, she felt so embarrassed. To have been so vulnerable? To have him holding her and saying it was alright, nothing to be embarrassed about princess. Comforting her. Like he could see everything inside her, could see right through her. And maybe he liked it for now but he wouldn't later, surely. The closer he got? And then there'd be repairs to do, things to plaster over, plaster together, makeshift bandaging, tape on anything you've got and call it your new skin, take it into yourself, take it. A crappy trashcan job of rigging herself back together into a functional goddamn human being, dirty and makeshift and busted up as this ship.

3\. In the light she could see him but he could see her, this was a problem, she liked how he looked very much, very much liked to see him, how he looked golden and delighted and like he cared about her, wanted her, like he liked what he saw. In the light she could see what he saw – the white discs of burn spots down her spine, the way that needle had left the inside of one elbow all tracked up and bulging like a common addict. She looked like a common victim, generic awful, bruised up battered scraps of a woman who didn't care about herself enough to treat her body well, to force others to treat her body well, to demand that her body be treated like the body of a human being. Weak.

Bacta was a kind of magic because if you slathered it on fast enough it made things well again, mended, dissolved wounds and burns and hurt, and it was magic because she didn't understand the chemistry. The Force was a kind of magic for similar reasons – something about life, something about cells. Alcohol worked in similar ways, and lubricant – made what was difficult easier, pleasurable. Drunk when she admitted, shy and slippery-tongued, that she didn't much like it in the shower, actually she didn't like it at all, after they'd done that more than once. More than more than once.

He looked stricken. _Sweetheart,_ what _the – what – how could you not – say anything? Fucking – Kriff, I didn't – how could you not –_ hell _Leia I––_

Stricken and hurt and angry––

 _That's not how this – I don't know what you've got in your head but that's not how this works –_ trying to be patient, talking to her like a child – _we're not – we're never doing anything you don't want to do, never ever, holy fucking––_

 _I did want to! I did! That's not – you're m-m-misunder-estimating-understanding me––_

 _I can't – talk about this right now when you're – fuck Leia, Kriff––_

Alcohol making it easier and harder, drinking another type of scar tissue, in the morning he showered without her, marked it morning, made it a day instead of another long stretch of lying together, and in the night before that day he'd worn clothes to bed beside her…

4\. She hadn't let him put his head between her legs, either – always guided him elsewhere or otherwise demurred, when he asked _(_ again those cocky words – _I promise it'll be good_ ) she said she couldn't stand to think of him looking, seeing her there. Sure he'd be able to see everything. He'd given her a queer sort of look. Something about _you know you can tell me anything, you know I want to see everything, you know I want to know everything about you._ She couldn't let that happen, she wished she could let that happen. _I want to know what it feels like––_

In the long talk after the fight about the shower he'd been guarded and cagey and hurt and said she couldn't do this to him, he couldn't live with himself and he was sick at the idea of it, if she let him do things she didn't want – _I did want! It wasn't that I didn't want –_ that she didn't like, then, and that's when she'd confessed it – said _it feels safer when it doesn't feel quite so good, when it doesn't feel as personal, because it feels so much less intense. Otherwise it all feels so vulnerable. It all feels so intense._

And he looked at her with so much patience and understanding and it made her want to cry, she hated it, she hated him for being so good to her, for making her adore him, kind gentle eyes teasing like _Go on, tell me. Tell me you don't love me. Tell me I'm not what you've been waiting for, that I don't make you feel okay with feeling so naked, with feeling feelings so intense that you might unravel, that you might cry, that you might like it with the lights on_ because _I can see you that way, not in spite of it. See you and want you._

 _That I'm not the type of person to whom when you say_ ow! _, that first vulnerable time, the time you'd cried when I drew it out of you and I say_ Why ow?, _you admit, timid and mortified at everything that had happened to your body,_ I think it might be scar tissue. _And I say,_ okay, that's okay. _And I kiss you and say,_ that's okay, not a problem. _Tell me something that's felt as good as that._

And he'd said, _I bet you we can find other ways to make you feel safe. Much better ways. I promise._

She'd flushed, thinking still of that first pledge, the one from before she'd let him bring her to tears – _I promise it'll be good._

Eyes like _tell me you don't love me, tell me I'm not the best thing that's ever happened to you, I dare you to plaster over all your raw spots rather than show them to me, I dare you to not let me tend to the hurt parts underneath all that scar tissue. Well? Go on._

"Okay," she'd say slowly, nodding, smiling, shy and for once not ashamed of being shy. "I trust you."

#

 _Your thoughtful comments mean the world._


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